


The Adventures of Space Ninja and Formerly-Not-Space Samurai

by Disasternoj



Category: BattleTech: MechWarrior, Original Work, Sunrider (Visual Novel)
Genre: Gen, Icari is stealth incarnate, Mission: Possible (If you’re very very sneaky), Pirates, Proper use of WD-40, Totally Unsuspicious Samurai, Why is the rum gone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-02-17
Packaged: 2018-09-25 07:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9808643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Disasternoj/pseuds/Disasternoj
Summary: Embellished from events during a Traveller RPG session, infiltrating and scouting an enemy fortress. Crossover between Sunrider and the MechWarrior/BattleTech universe. (Kinda.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This story arose from a short session of the Traveller tabletop RPG with myself and one other player, out of a longer campaign. My character is literally the space mercenary Icari Isidolde from the Sunrider games. Why she’s in the BattleTech universe with a Pokémon-training samurai/maid from the 15th century is another story.
> 
> (♫ markers link to thematic music for those so inclined.)

[[♫]](http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=-_rb6hNLIbs#Stealth_Music_-_Recon)

Two figures lay atop a ridge in the deepening darkness of the second watch, observing the base, the slight glow of their night-vision headsets the only visible marker of their presence.

One of them mutters into a comm. “Squeak, come in. Are you in position?”

The reply comes almost instantly. “Yeah, yeah. Waitin’ on you two.” The high, raspy voice pauses briefly, before continuing, “Looks like one guy on each of the guard towers. _Including_ the ones with the turrets. Couple more on the connecting walls.”

A faint voice, lower than the first, says, “Wouldn’t want this to end up like Hesperus II, would we?”, immediately followed by a “Shut it, Johnny.”

“Got it.” The speaker glances over at her companion, who puts down her eagle-eyes and nods, confirming Squeak’s headcount. “Alright. Let’s move, Nisha.”

She rises to a crouch, stowing the comm, and begins slipping down into the adjacent canyon, ghosting along the rugged rock walls in the faint light of the planet’s pair of tiny moons. With the camouflage and infrared damping provided by their newly acquired high-tech cloth armor, the pair are invisible against the shadowed ridges as they wind their way towards the pirate base.

\---------------------------------------------------

When they emerged from the canyon, the outbuildings were no more than thirty meters away. Two of the three guard towers on this side of the base were equipped with searchlights, sweeping across the junk-ridden terrain around the walls, highlighting themselves against the deeper blackness of the mountain beyond.

After a moment, Icari signaled to her companion that they should get over to the larger building, as cover from the lights. The confusion on what was visible of the samurai’s face indicated that the subtleties of Alliance hand signals were lost on her… but the important point apparently got across, as she followed closely when Icari crouch-ran over to the nearest stack of the crates littering the area.

They waited, motionless, as the spotlight crept past. Icari turned to Nisha and muttered, “Follow my lead. Cross over when I signal you.”

The mercenary pivoted and dived across the open space to the next segment of crumbling wall and abandoned equipment, rolling back onto her feet behind her new cover. Icari was in her element. She crossed the remaining distance to the outbuilding in bursts of motion, running low to the ground when the gaps were too large to cover with a dive.

Nisha watched, silently, as her companion crossed to the building without so much as a thudding sound or a puff of dust. When the faint green radiance of Icari’s goggles reappeared and a barely visible hand waved her over, Nisha followed in her footsteps, glancing up at the guards patrolling the wall. Stealth wasn’t covered in her training, but she’d had to adapt to a great number of things since the encounter with the Deck of Many Things.

A thought appeared to strike Icari as her partner arrived at the corner of the large outbuilding. Glancing in the adjacent window, racks of jugs and containers could be seen lining the walls of the back room. “I think we just found a solution to the unconscious guard problem,” she muttered.

Nisha glanced in through the window, narrowing eyes concealed by the goggles’ dim glow. “My lord’s guards would be dismissed or executed for drinking on the job,” she scoffed, a disdainful snort escaping the normally composed samurai.

The only reply Icari offered to the subtle dig was a shrug nearly lost to the darkness. “These _are_ pirates- nobody’d believe them anyway.” She turned to the door into the back room, pulling out a set of tools to deal with the lock. The ancient padlock gave way easily, allowing the pair to nudge the door open and slip inside. They each seized a small jug of the least-foul brew they could find, hooking them onto their belts.

The two infiltrators left the storehouse, creeping around to the base of the closest guard tower. Rhythmic footsteps sounded from above as the guard patrolled their section of wall, inching towards the first turret tower.

As they reached the base, Icari craned her neck upwards, watching for the guard atop the tower, 30 meters above. After a few moments, a faint silhouette peered over the lip, then withdrew. Allowing time for the guard to move away, she aimed upwards with the grappling gun, firing at the ten-second mark. The hook sank into the stonework, just shy of the lip of the tower, sound masked by the footsteps and muted conversation spilling out from the open doorway at the tower’s meeting with the wall.

The mercenary seized the thin line and prepared to climb, murmuring “Follow me up when I tug on the line.” At Nisha’s nod, she began pulling herself up the line, bracing against the tower with her feet when needed. Progress was slow. She occasionally had to flatten herself against the wall in midair, muscles burning, as footsteps approached the doorway around the side of the tower, resuming her climb only when no one was nearby.

As she neared the top of the structure, Icari paused, waiting for the guard to pass her by again. Mere seconds later, a dark figure leaned over the edge of the tower once again, scanning the area, but thankfully never glancing straight down. Icari was glad she didn’t have to pull them off the tower. That would have made a lot of noise.

As the guard walked away, Icari tensed, pulling herself up the last few feet and flipping up over the edge into a crouch. The guard’s back was turned as he strolled across to the next edge of the tower, passing by the large missile turret mounted on the tower’s roof. _That_ was what they had come for. The guard was simply in the way.

With careful, silent steps, Icari came up behind the guard, garrote at the ready. His head turned slightly to the side, as though he had heard the scuff of boots on stone behind him… as the wire came down and wrapped around his neck.

Surprised though he was, instinct let him jam a hand between the tightening wire and his throat. Behind him, Icari strained to bring the wire to bear across his windpipe, but the resistance from one arm proved enough to let the guard swing his rifle behind him one-handed. The sudden blow to her stomach and loss of breath was all the guard needed to escape her hold and turn to face his assailant.

Just as the guard began to take in that he was being attacked by a feminine figure in heavy camo, Icari threw him further off balance by grabbing him and pressing a kiss upon him. While he was still flustered and confused, she seized the opportunity to knee him squarely in his family jewels.

As he hunched over, gasping in pain, Icari grabbed his head and attempted to bring her other leg up to knee him in the head, and put an end to the scuffle. Just as she was about to make contact, he lurched to the side, practically falling over to break out of her grasp.

The man glanced up at Icari, still wheezing in pain and reeling with confusion. In short order, he’d been choked, kissed, and kneed in the nuts by a woman a good foot shorter than him, who had appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the night.

He gasped, “Crazy bitch!” and brought up his rifle to point at her, just as Icari’s fist swung towards the side of his head. _This would be so much easier if I could just kill this bastard_ , Icari sighed internally. There was a reason she usually carried a wakizashi.

The unexpected fist to the temple knocked aside his aim, but as Icari lunged for the gun, he still managed to squeeze a shot off. The gunshot echoed in the stillness of the darkened pirate base.

Nisha, still waiting at the base of the tower, immediately seized the dangling line and began climbing. Thinking some very unladylike thoughts to herself, she scaled the tower as rapidly as possible. She needed to put an end to the situation, personally, before the mercenary made it any worse.

Atop the tower, Icari charged the guard again, making bird noises as she approached. The sentry, completely bewildered, just stared at her, forgetting to even attempt to fire again.

Taking advantage of his distraction, she tackled him to the floor of the guard tower, trying to keep his hands away from the gun. They grappled on the ground, fighting for control of the firearm. Just as Nisha crested the tower, Icari managed to drag the rifle from his grasp, inadvertently firing another round as the guard’s finger was dragged from the trigger. The bullet slammed into the low stonework on the other side of the tower.

As the gun skittered away on the stone floor, Icari slammed the guard’s head into the ground once, twice, trying to knock him out before he did any more damage to their mission. Still, he fought, despite the glazing in his eyes.

Just as he grabbed Icari’s arm and tried to pull her off of him, a fist swung out of the adjacent darkness, slamming into his forehead. His skull bounced off the ground… and he fell limp.

[[♫]](http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=A7XlLZelPVg#Stealth_Music_-_Espionage)

Panting, still atop the now unconscious guard, Icari again brought her hands up to her face and imitated the local thrush as best she could. When Nisha gave her a look that said only “ _What_ are you doing?”, she gave the samurai a winded grin and responded, “He was… shooting at a bird.”

Nisha brought a hand up to her face and shook her head in despair. This woman was going to be the death of her. As she was about to speak again, the fallen guard’s comm crackled to life. “Marcus! What the hell’s going on over there?” The pair glimpsed the guard on the nearby spotlight tower looking in their direction.

With a quick glance at her companion and a ‘get down’ gesture, Icari dragged the guard over to the low wall, propping him up against it, and answered his comm.

Lowering her voice as much as possible, she transmitted, “Th’re wrzz… *hic* big-ass bird… bird *hic* attack, yeah?” As Icari continued to babble about birds in imitated drunkenness, Nisha brought the guard’s gun over and placed it in his right hand. Pulling out the jug of Admiral Grisham’s Finest Rum they had pilfered, she spilled a little on the comatose sentry, poured more over the outside edge of the tower, and wrapped his other hand around its handle.

“Marcus, you goddamn drunken bastard. I’m sending a man to replace you. You obviously can’t keep yourself together for ONE SHIFT.”

With their gambit apparently successful, and, surprisingly, no other response from the nearby guards, the pair of infiltrators dashed over to the missile turret. Icari gestured to Nisha to take the right-hand missile pod, as she pulled out one of the bricks of C4 they had prepared with wireless detonators. After a great deal of wriggling and careful application of force, the two had lodged a hefty chunk of explosive in the back of each missile pod.

As Nisha extricated herself from the rack of rigged explosives, the sound of the tower’s internal lift starting up reached their ears. The pair froze for an instant, glancing at each other, before sprinting for the grappling line as quietly as they could. Nisha rappelled down the tower as quickly as _probably_ wouldn’t get her killed if she slipped. Icari followed once she was halfway down, catching a glimpse of the lift arriving on the roof as she slipped over the edge and back into the shadows.

Landing, mostly unharmed, back on the ground, Icari let out a tiny sigh of relief. Glancing at Nisha, she muttered, “Next time we’re going up _together_.” The samurai simply nodded, somehow conveying infinite exasperation with her partner in sabotage through the single small gesture.

Icari squeezed the trigger on the grapple gun again, releasing the hook, began leading her companion back around the storage building as she reeled it in. They wanted to cross the open ground in front of the base as far from the enormous front gate as possible. As they passed a small maintenance shed, she paused. “Do we want to try for the gate?”

Nisha considered, tilting her head to one side. “Their security seems lax enough that it might be possible.” Glancing at the shed, she continued, “I caught a glimpse of the inside- it uses a set of very large barrel hinges. Perhaps we can find something of use in here?”

“Might as well try,” Icari responded, turning and slipping into the unlocked shed. A moment of searching yielded a can of industrial grease and a crowbar. “Heh. This’ll do nicely,” she announced to the still, dusty air.

As she rejoined Nisha outside, Icari immediately moved around to the back of the shed, holding up her finds for her partner to see before stowing them in the slim bag on her back.

Once again, they played the waiting game, seeking an opportunity to cross the gap without detection by the wandering searchlights. As soon as it came, they dashed across the open lane, trusting in the shadows and their camo gear to shield them from the eyes above the great gate.

The pair rounded the small “gentleman’s club” outbuilding that the pirates had (for some reason), darting between pieces of cover to the base of the second turret tower. Icari’s expertise in stealth helped her pick out a path for her comrade involving as little exposure as possible.

Standing at the foot of a tower once again, the pair repeated the process. Waiting for the guard to appear and turn away, firing the grappling gun to hook into the battlements, and scaling as unobtrusively as possible. This time, however, the samurai hung from the line right below Icari, waiting on her signal. Unfortunately for Nisha, this guard appeared to have a habit of spitting over the edge of the tower- and dodging while hanging in midair is difficult for most. Wiping her face on her shoulder, her one good eye simmered beneath the night-vision goggles.

As the guard turned away again, humming to himself, Icari ghosted over the edge of the tower, Nisha clambering up after her. As soon as they were both atop the tower, they crept towards the oblivious guard. This one didn’t even suspect a thing… until Nisha seized him from behind and held him immobile, while Icari put him to sleep with the garrote.

Peeking over the battlements, Nisha checked that none of the guards on the nearby towers had noticed anything, while Icari incriminated the fallen sentry with the second jug of rum. Seeing no reaction to their much quieter takedown, the pair rigged the missile pods of this turret as well.

The two saboteurs hadn’t expected their mission to go this smoothly… despite that it hadn’t gone smoothly at all with the first guard. No one appeared to have noticed their presence, and the unconscious guards shouldn’t be waking up until after they were gone.

Icari peered over the edge of the tower overlooking the courtyard of the pirate base. A wide, flat space stretched between the arcing outer walls and the main entrance to the base, embedded deep into the mountain. A few guards and mechanics crossed the open ground periodically, heading to different towers or back through the open inner gate, passing by occasional tufts of the tough grass that spread inward from the walls.

From her vantage point next to it, Icari grasped the true enormity of the gate they had circumvented for the first time. A pair of monstrous wooden doors took up most of the space between the turret towers, and nearly all the vertical space the 20 meter-high wall had to offer. This thing had to accommodate Assault ‘Mechs- the only bigger doors you were going to find would be on a dropship hangar.

The scale of the thing almost made her reconsider. Those hinges were nearly the size of her entire body! Then again… even from this height, she could see that the internal pins would have to be much smaller. It still might be possible to extract them… the only question was where she would put them. The pins would still be too heavy to carry out when they left.

While Icari considered the front doors, Nisha scanned what she could see through the inner gate. Despite that its stature matched the outer gate, her elevation restricted her view through the doors to a small glimpse of a few large sets of wheels.

Icari crept back over to the samurai. “See anything?”

“Not from here,” she replied, gesturing at the visible sliver of the hangar. “We will need to get into the base itself to get a good estimate of their offensive strength...”

The pair thought for a moment, scanning the courtyard and the top of their tower, until Nisha spoke up again. “I think I have a way to get inside,” she said, turning to look at the unconscious guard slumped against the wall.

Icari looked confused for an instant, before her characteristic smirk slid back across her face. “I should’ve known you’d be into playing dress-up.”

\---------------------------------------------------

A bulky figure in what passed for a uniform among pirates crossed the courtyard at a measured pace. Carrying the standard-issue rifle and walking as though she belonged, Nisha walked straight towards the front gate, entirely ignored. Wearing the unconscious guard’s clothes over the camo suit wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it added to the authenticity of the burly guard illusion. The now-revealed eyepatch across the right side of her face didn’t hurt, either.

Meanwhile, Icari slipped through the shadows at the edge of the courtyard, heading for the gate. Even weighed down by the extra tools and the remainder of their C4, the few eyes on the courtyard completely failed to register the camouflaged mercenary.

Reaching the base of the gate, Icari set down everything but her tools and a brick of explosive behind a convenient overgrown tuft of grass growing up against the wall. The first of the four hinges was just out of reach from the ground. Checking that no one was looking in her direction, she wedged her foot into a crack in the wall and boosted herself up to a level where she could tinker with the hinge.

With liberal application of the substance labeled “WD-40” and a minute of fiddling with the placement of the crowbar, Icari was able to lever the huge pin enough out of its socket to be fully extracted by hand. Carefully pinning the component to the wall with her side, she replaced it with a full brick of C4.

Dropping back to the shadowed ground with an audible _thud_ , Icari froze, leg muscles still burning, and waited for any reaction to the noise. When none came, she carefully laid the heavy pin down in the cover of more encroaching grass, and looked up at the second hinge, ten meters above.

 _Well,_ this _is going to be fun._

\---------------------------------------------------

Entering the base as confidently as she could, Nisha turned and strolled along the interior wall, taking inventory of the vehicles in the entry hangar. Amongst a large number of standard, open-top Jeeps, she spotted at least two medium-sized tanks and a pair of armored hovercraft. As she moved deeper into the hangar, a heavy Rommel tank came into view from between its lighter cousins.

That was a worrying amount of firepower for just the vehicle contingent. Nisha also saw a sign above a descending side passage marked “Mech Bay” on the far side of the cavernous room… but decided that they had pushed their luck far enough, and turned to head back to the entrance. As she was about to reach the open doors, another guard entered and walked straight towards her.

The tension in her spine magnified instantly, but she kept going as nonchalantly as she could manage. As the real guard was about to reach her, she glared at him with her one remaining eye and nodded sharply, as if confirming that she knew him (and was not happy about it)… and the guard walked straight past her.

She could have sworn that his eyes lingered on her longer than would be normal, but was evidently satisfied with whatever he saw. Hopefully it was just her currently very padded rear, and not the slightly ill-fitting uniform and unfamiliar face. Exiting the base, Nisha’s face colored slightly, wondering how she had come to _hope_ someone was staring at her ass.

Across the courtyard, Icari struggled to dislodge the fourth and final hinge pin, wedged into a divot in the wall ten meters off the ground. No matter how much she heaved on the slowly deforming crowbar, the pin refused to budge from its housing. Frustrated and running out of time, she kicked the underside of the hinge… and heard a ‘ting’ as a small piece of metal was dislodged from the bottom of the hinge and flew off into the darkness.

Suddenly, the crowbar she had been leaning on shifted as the pin slid up, released from the jamming sliver that had generated so much friction. Scrambling to regain her balance, she ended up clutching the hinge casing for support, the crowbar dangling from one finger.

Seeing Nisha walk out through the front doors, Icari gathered herself and gestured towards the near-invisible line still hanging from the second turret tower. After taking a moment to finish removing the pin and inserting its more volatile replacement, she climbed back down the pitted and cracked surface of the wall. By the time she reached the ground again, Icari knew her legs were going to give her hell for this tomorrow.

Hiding the last pin amongst the clumps of wild grass as best she could, Icari ghosted back over to the base of the tower. Nisha was already climbing up the line, and Icari followed as quickly as she could without drawing attention to her movement.

The pair quickly redressed the comatose guard, adding some rum to the front of his now-rumpled uniform as additional “proof”, and descended the grappling gun back down to the outside of the tower.

As they darted back past the “gentleman’s club”, a single stumbling man noticed two figures moving around the corner. “Hey!” he called out, but they were already gone, slipping away into the impenetrable shadows of the highland night.

Once the two were out of sight in another canyon, they broke into a full-on sprint, in case anyone came looking for them. Pulling out her comm as they ran, Icari tuned the dials to a new channel, transmitting, “Mission successful. We’re coming to you now, Squad 2. We will not be needing that distraction. Please confirm.”

The comm crackled for a moment, before a gruff “Aff. Standing by for exit,” came back to them. On the main crew channel, Nisha instructed, “Stand down, Squeak. We have escaped without detection. Meet us at the rendezvous point.”

Squeak’s disgruntled reply came through the comm. “You never let me have any fun.” “Not as much as Hesperus II, anyway.” “Johnny, I will push you off this cliff.”

As the mercenary and the samurai crossed over the ridge and into view of the squad of Clan marines and their truck, Icari chuckled coldly.

“These bastards have no _idea_ what’s about to hit them.”

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Yes, I rolled very poorly during that first surprise attack. Welcome to my life.
> 
> I may end up turning more sessions from this campaign into short fics… we shall see.  
> I do intend to write some original-universe fics for Icari as her own character, and not as my vehicle for playing an RPG. Soon™.
> 
> This turned out to be the longest single-sitting fic I’ve yet written- thanks to my Traveller group for beta-ing. Whether you enjoyed this or hated it, please leave a comment and tell me why. It helps me grow as a writer, and makes me very happy. ^_^


End file.
